Category: Opinion

By Morgan Fletcher –

Many people lead interesting lives and have remarkable stories to tell.

I absolutely love hearing the life experiences of people from all walks of life, and I am always prompting people to tell me more about themselves and what they’ve gone through.

I’ll admit that sometimes I wish I’d never asked to hear people share something with me, because what they say ends up being just an overrun saga of something they’ve probably embellished a bit.

But then there are times when I hear what someone is going through and I am really moved by it.

Such was the case when I read Nick Charles’ story.

Sixty-four-year-old Nick Charles is a sports anchor who has been in the business for 40 years.  He has covered almost every major sporting event and was CNN’s first sportscaster in 1980.

Charles has terminal bladder cancer and is living every day very gratefully.  He was expected to live 20 months with treatment but is currently on his 21st month.

I have taken an interest in Charles’ story for more reasons than one.

Of course one of those reasons is the fact that the story is extremely sad and touching, but it also serves as inspiration.

Charles has a five-year-old daughter named Giovanna with Cory, his wife of 13 years.

Throughout his journey living with cancer, he has made a collection of videos to leave for his little girl so that she can grow up with a father even when he’s not physically with her.

Giovanna is very aware of her father’s illness and is staying strong to console her mother who she tells not to worry because ‘Daddy will always be in your heart.’

Charles has an optimistic outlook and is positive that his family will be fine when he’s gone.

He says he’s ready to go home to God as he has endured a lot of pain over the last year and is at a great place presently.

“I can’t believe I feel so good about the last week of my life, but I do … I finally got my life right,” Charles said.

His biggest fear is that Giovanna will be the one to find him.

I also feel a certain connection with Charles as I consider him a career influence.  My goal is to become a court-side reporter, and I’m always telling people that I’m going to be the next Pam Oliver.

I happened to stumble across his story by chance as I was leisurely browsing CNN’s website.  When I saw the headline regarding Charles, I immediately wanted to find out more so I clicked and watched the heart-wrenching interview.

I’ve watched a lot of Oprah over the years so I’ve seen a lot of sad stories of the struggles and hardships that people face, much like Charles and his family.

I can’t imagine what they’re experiencing as I’ve never been through anything similar, but I know in life it’s only reasonable to expect to hit a rough patch eventually.

I only hope that I can have the strength of little Giovanna when that time comes for me.

By Morgan Fletcher –

When the topic of learning to drive comes up, I try my hardest to change the subject.

See the thing is, I’m 18 and I still don’t have my license.

Yes, I know you’re thinking why on Earth have I waited so long.

The truth is, I just wasn’t the typical teenager who rushed to the DMV on my sixteenth birthday in hopes of getting my permit.

In fact, I waited months after my birthday to finally work up the motivation to take the test and I failed not once, but twice.

Third time proved to be the charm, however, as I finally landed the ticket to freedom.  That’s hardly the merit I gave to my permit, though, for I let it expire and I had to renew it late last year.

There are reasons as to why I just wasn’t initially psyched to learn to drive.

For one, I have a twin sister, and my parents made it very clear that when we started driving, there would be only one car for us to share.  Since my sister hopped on the first opportunity to get her permit and landed it on the first attempt, I figured, why should I bother getting mine if we already have to share a car?

A lot of times we’re going to the same place anyway and if not, she or my parents just take me where I need to go.

I have to say, though, if I knew all the wrath I’d receive from friends and family for not getting my license in a reasonable time frame, I might have attempted to learn to drive sooner.

I’m constantly called lazy and one of my sister’s favorite things to do is to complain about how annoyed she gets by toting me around everywhere, which is hardly true.

It’s not like I don’t take responsibility for OUR vehicle.

My dad, my sister and I all put one-third into the car payment and every time we get gas, my sister and I split the bill.

So it’s basically like I’m driving the car too, I’m just never behind the wheel.  At least that’s what I tell myself.

Needless to say, I haven’t practiced driving too, too much.  My dad is the designated driving instructor as my mom refuses to get in a car with me behind the wheel.
Based on the few times we’ve gone out to drive, I wouldn’t consider myself to be terrible.

Sometimes my dad gets a little impatient and I get frustrated.  He tells me I drive like an old woman.

I really can’t tell how good of a driver I’m going to be but hopefully I’ll manage to steer clear of  too much trouble.

My mom told me that ever since she saw me drive the antique cars at Hershey Park, she’s been worried about my driving skills.

I’ll admit that it gets annoying to have to call and wait for my parents or sister to pick me up from work and I get frustrated sometimes because I don’t have the freedom to just get up and go as I please.

But then again I really wouldn’t have that freedom if I did have my license since my sister and I have to share the car.  Many more fights will spark when I begin to drive because we will constantly be fighting over who gets the car.

Still, I know my time to get behind the wheel is long overdue and I plan to practice more and go for my license before summer approaches.

Unlike most people my age, I still have time to make learning-to-drive memories.

By Lauren Ressler –

It’s hard to grow up without knowing where half of you comes from.

I always lived with my dad and I had just always accepted that my mom wasn’t around and she never would be. I had two pictures of her that I kept hidden in the pages of my favorite book. They were pictures that were worn at the edges and yellowed on the back from age. She was pretty. Her hair was long and blond, with an eighties-style perm. I liked to think that I looked like her, but I was scared to ask; We didn’t talk about ‘my real mom’ at home.

There were always women in my life, but none could ever fill the ‘mom shoes.’ There were girlfriends and wives who were nice enough, but a little awkward trying to raise a geeky kid that didn’t biologically belong to them. My grandma and my aunts always made it a point to take me under their wing, but I never had mom’s cooking, mom’s hugs or mom’s time-outs.

Recently, while sitting in third block statistics, my phone buzzed. Facebook notification. It can wait, I thought. Later in the day I reviewed the friend request: John Fuqua. Fuqua… ‘That’s my mom’s last name,’ I thought to myself. My heart skipped a beat, but I reminded myself that I probably didn’t want to know my mom. She had left me, after all. She had abandoned me with my dad and his family, and had taken up a bad habit; Cocaine, heroine, Oxy. They were all more important to her than me.

With mixed emotions, I called my aunt. What do I do? What do I say? She assured me that this could be a turning point in my life. People can change. I wasn’t scared to talk to my mom or her family. I was scared to be disappointed. I had gotten along just fine without her, but deep down inside of me I knew I missed her. All I knew about her were those old pictures and of course the things people said about her.

With uneasy feelings, I pressed ‘accept’. Within five minutes, I received a message in my inbox. The first few words instantly cured my fear:

“You still have that gorgeous face and eyes that I met when you were a tiny little thing. Your mom loves you VERY much. It’s a long, not-so-pretty story but a VERY happy ending can be had.”

The pathways of communication were instantly opened. Facebook messages and emails flew from my laptop in Lancaster to my Papa’s old PC in Pensacola, Florida. It was exciting to know that my mom’s family still loved me, but there was still doubt in my mind; Did I want to know her?

With shaking hands, late on a Sunday afternoon, I picked up the phone to call the most important woman I had never met.

“Hi Mom, it’s me…”

By Lauren Ressler –

She instantly burst into tears. I remember the first words she said to me:

“Baby girl, I’ve missed you so much. I’m so sorry.”

After a good fifteen minutes of crying, I soon learned that this woman I was so scared to be disappointed in hadn’t abandoned me at all. We talked a little about the past, but focused mostly on the present and the future. That was refreshing; I didn’t need to hear about the past. It didn’t matter anymore why she wasn’t in my life for seventeen years, the fact was that she wasn’t there and now she was.

She told me her life had turned around. There were no more drugs, no more rough life. She explained to me that her mom had never been in her life either. When she was a teenager, she called her mom for the first time. Her mom was drunk in a bar and said ‘Carol, when you’re eighteen, call me. I’ll take you to Disney World.’ My mom was devastated. Years later, she received a phone call from her half sister who told her their mom had a month to live.

“I didn’t go,” my mom said to me about visiting her mother. “If I was dying in a hospital, the last thing I would want is my biggest regret staring me in the face.”

She told me I wasn’t a regret, and that she loved me very much. She didn’t want me to be disappointed in her like she was in her own mother.

That initial phone call gave me closure. It settled all of the tiny insecurities that had built up around not having a mother. My mom and I talk almost every day, now. I’m hoping to finally meet her again during graduation. I’m not disappointed at all. Our relationship isn’t awkward, or strained. In fact, rekindling my relationship with my mom has made me realize that real family will love and support you through every circumstance, even when they can’t be right there beside you.

By Lauren Richards –

I think more people in my grade know my brother than they do me. And considering my brother is six years older than me, I consider this clearly pathetic.

For as long as I can remember my brother and I have been polar opposites. Him, the outgoing one with a ton of friends, and me the shy one who prefers books to people. For a while this didn’t bother me, but eventually I got sick of, “Aren’t you Dan Richards’s sister?”

With his tall stature and lengthy body shape my brother is relatively average looking, yet there is something about him that seems to make you look twice. He’s always wearing his quirky smile that never fails to look 100 percent genuine and in his gray-blue eyes you can never catch a hint of judgment.

Even teachers ask me about him and he graduated five years ago. One day I was walking down the hall and I was stopped by a particular teacher, whom I had in ninth grade mind you. There was no, “Hi Lauren, how are you?” No, instead I was greeted with a, “How’s your brother doing?”

My brother didn’t just have a bunch of acquaintances, he had numerous genuine friends. I swear he had an average of five friends over each week, all on different days. And I could never keep up with all the girls. One day he’d be asking me for advice about the girl he brought over that night and I would try so hard to give him the best suggestions possible. The next day when I saw him, I would anxiously ask him if my advice worked, only to be told that he met another girl and she’d be over later.

Once he brought home an exchange student from the Middle East that he met in one of his classes, the next week he was a member of our household. Oh and for the record, a couple weeks later he was shipped back to whatever country he came from for searching how to make homemade bombs on the internet at school. Sometimes my brother was a little too open to new people and his ability to judge others wasn’t always on point.

I’ll admit that my brother has some traits that I wouldn’t want. For instance, his vulnerability, naivety and gullibility. To say that my brother is too trusting would be the understatement of the year. Also, I have some traits that I wouldn’t want to give up. For example, I am a much better student than my brother and I have had relatively the same small group of friends for my whole time in high school. But sometimes I do wish that I could walk into a room and talk to any random person or that when I walked down the hall I was bombarded with people saying hi and waving to me from all directions. It would also be nice to have something to do every single night and go to three proms like my brother did.

However, I’ve learned to accept the fact that I will never be like my brother. Though we’re linked by genetics, it seems like my brother and I have literally nothing else in common. In literary terms, we are foil characters. While one talks, the other listens. One is outgoing, the other shy. And one of us is book smart whereas  the other one is more smart socially. I like to think of it though as us being complements of each other, we may be different but we go well together.